With the advent of multimedia conference calls, problems arise when not all conferees wish or are able to fully use all media communication types of the multimedia conference call. In addition, two or more conferees may from time to time wish to use additional media types. Prior art multimedia conference systems are unable to solve these problems and require all conferees to use identical media communication types. Such a system is set forth in U.S. Pat. No. 5,195,086. For example, if a conferee is unable to reach their multimedia communication terminal when the multimedia conference call starts, the conferee can not participate in the multimedia conference call using their wireless telephone and then switch to their multimedia communication terminal upon reaching that terminal. If the conference call is only a voice call, modem business telecommunication switching systems allow the conferee to handle such situations. As more business telecommunication switching systems offer wireless service as an integrated service, this problem will become common. If the equipment performing the multimedia conferencing is not part of the business telecommunication switching system, the telecommunication switching system must drop the voice call and establish a multimedia call to the conferencing equipment. This normally requires the conferee to enter the conference information both to the telecommunication switching system and the conferencing equipment.
In addition, multimedia conference calls use a large amount of communication bandwidth. At different times during the conference call, a conferee may only want to listen to the conference call or to see only the data portion. Prior art multimedia conferencing systems can not accommodate such activities without manual intervention by the conferee. Further, during the initial introduction of multimedia conferencing systems, many people wishing to participate in a multimedia conference will not have available a multimedia terminal. Without a mechanism to enable people without multimedia terminals to participate, the wide spread use of multimedia conferencing systems will be inhibited.